The Fields Institute Turns Twenty-Five 170725 Final book with covers | Page 131

The Fields Medal Symposium
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competition to house the permanent administrative offices
of the International Mathematical Union. I presented the
Fields bid to the General Assembly of the IMU, meeting
in Bangalore in August 2010, just before the International
Congress of Mathematicians in Hyderabad. A decision in
favour of the Weierstrass Institute was made by a majority
vote. The IMU Executive was very appreciative of all three
bids. The competition also provided an opportunity to get
the IMU to support the idea of the Fields Medal Symposium,
which I felt would be scientifically of great interest to the
Fields Institute and the mathematical world. IMU President
Ingrid Daubechies and Secretary Martin Grötschel were both
enthusiastic about the idea. The IMU endorsed the initiative
as a way to raise public awareness of the Fields Medal and to
increase its monetary value.
The Fields Medal Symposium each year celebrates the
discoveries of one of the recent Fields Medallists. The
Symposium includes an honorarium of $25,000 for the
honoured medallist, still very modest by the standards of other
top international awards.
To get the Fields Medal Symposium off the ground, I felt
it was necessary to raise private sponsorship support for at
least the first eight years in order to enable the Symposium
to get established and attract more stable long-term support.
We decided to recognize several levels of support. I was
thrilled by the enthusiasm for the idea of t